Honduras Weekly
Liberal presidential pre-candidate Mauricio Villeda on Friday said that during a trip to Colombia to visit with then-President Álvaro Uribe (2002-2010), he was given access to a document captured from the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (FARC) revealing a plan by the FARC to destabilize Honduras by kidnapping and assassinating key political figures in the country and systematically dismantling its major political parties. Mr. Villeda, who was speaking to a group of law students at the Technological University of Central America (Unitec) in Tegucigalpa, said that he has a copy of the document which lists numerous individuals in Honduras targeted by the FARC. "There, you can read about the plan against Honduras... there, you can read the names of the persons who are to be kidnapped in Honduras, or who were to be kidnapped in Honduras," and Mr. Villeda.

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AEC
AEC Narrow Fabrics of Asheboro, North Carolina, announced the acquisition of controlling interest in Telas Elasticas SARL (Tesa) located in Honduras -- its fifth manufacturing plant. The Tesa acquisition expands AEC’s product line and development capabilities, positioning it as the most capable, full-range narrow fabrics producer in North and Central America. AEC’s President, Bob Lawson said, “This is a significant strategic step for AEC; we are now a full range supplier of narrow elastics and rigid fabrics. In Honduras, the Tesa plant will manufacture jacquards and intimate apparel elastics. AEC’s plant in El Salvador will focus on knitted production. Our capacity will grow by more than 30 percent. We have increased our ability to support our customers as they increase their production in Central and North America and move more programs back from Asia.”

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Many Latin American law enforcement organizations find it virtually impossible to secure the willing cooperation of the public (in some cases because people fear that the police and the criminals are one in the same).

By Jerry Brewer
In the history of traditional policing, it is hard to fathom that the need to evolve into paramilitary strategies and war-like engagement would become necessary. Regardless of public opinion and other pundit conjecture on policing methodology, the rule of law must prevail within a homeland to safeguard human life and property, and provide a harmonious quality of life. Latin American nations, especially Mexico, had a sobering wakeup call and faced the truth that their historic policing infrastructures were no match for domestic and transnational criminals and drug insurgents, who murder with impunity while brandishing weapons that inflict mass casualties. Mexican police have faced grenades, grenade launchers, military-type AK-47 and AR-15 rifles, body armor, and tens of thousands of rounds of ammunition.

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Honduras Weekly
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) today approved a US$40 million loan to Honduras' National Electric Energy Company (ENEE) to invest in improvements in electric transmission lines, including the installation of transformer, protection, and measurement equipment for the distribution network. Some of the funds will also be used to strengthen ENEE commercial infrastructure so that it can better administer its billing and payments system. According to ENEE's assisant technical manager Leonardo Deras, the loan was acquired at extremely low rates of interest. The loan is a follow-up to a US$33.8 million credit extended by the IDB to ENEE on January 27, 2011 for similar efforts to modernize the company. Those funds were destined for investments in the construction of substations and transmission lines and the acquisition of communications equipment.

Augustine justified government and church subjugation of its' citizens based on his personal inability to choose good over evil and his assumption that everyone else must be as incapable as he.

By Marco Cáceres
It is a shame that Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD) won out over Pelagius (354-418 AD), also known as Morien. Christianity would have turned out differently (... and better, in my view) had the Briton won out over the north African. Mr. Augustine taught that humankind is sinful by nature, and that without the grace of the Creator that sinfulness could only earn one eternal damnation. It is a totally negative view of humanity, which it goes contrary to my belief in the perfection God's creation. If God is perfect, then I sense so is the product of God's work. According to Augustine, humankind's salvation came solely through the grace of God, as presented in the person and sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and that this grace came only by God's pleasure, to whomsoever he chose to extend it, without requiring any effort on man's part to complete the transaction.

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The policy options are not good. The reality is that in today’s Honduras a government of any ideological stripe would turn to the military to counter the rampant drug trade and criminal violence.

By Michael Shifter
The spreading drug-fueled violence in Honduras -- arguably the most troubled country in the Western Hemisphere -- should be addressed through effective civilian law enforcement institutions, not military forces. Strengthening such institutions should be the principal focus of United States policy and cooperation with Honduras and other nations beset by criminal violence. The problem, however, is that building professional police forces is a difficult, long-term task, and countries like Honduras, with the world’s highest level of homicides, can hardly afford to wait. There is, understandably, enormous public pressure to call on the military to help contain the violence.

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The idea that security and human rights are a trade-off is pernicious to a rights-based society. There can be no security without human rights. The Mexican government’s retort that criminals are the major violators of human rights minimizes government responsibility for ensuring a society that respects human rights and for preventing and punishing violations by state actors.

By Laura Carlsen
Mexico is currently confronting a human rights crisis. Headlines document the overt violence that has claimed more than 50,000 lives since December 11, 2006 when President Felipe Calderón launched the war on drugs. Yet beneath the bloodshed, the erosion of the rule of law and the systematic violation of human rights in the context of the armed conflict caused by the drug war has created a more profound crisis in Mexican society, one whose causes and effects are not only ill-defined but often purposely obscured.

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According to a criminal complaint affidavit, since between 2006 and May 2012, a contingent of Honduran immigrants living in and around Fairfax County has coordinated with sources of supply in Honduras to pay couriers to fly cocaine from Honduras to the United States on a regular basis.

FBI
Twenty-eight individuals have been arrested for their alleged roles in a cocaine trafficking ring based in Northern Virginia that uses couriers to regularly import large amounts of cocaine from Honduras hidden in shoes and decorative wooden frames. Members of the trafficking ring have allegedly wired more than US$1 million from the United States back to cocaine suppliers in Honduras. Neil H. MacBride, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and James W. McJunkin, Assistant Director in Charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Washington Field Office, made the announcement after the charges became public.

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"From approximately 2006 through August 2010, Walid Makled-Garcia operated and controlled several airstrips located in Venezuela." The airstrips "were used by different drug trafficking organizations in order to fly multi-thousand kilogram quantities of cocaine out of Venezuela, to locations in Central America."

By Jerry Brewer
Thirteen years ago Hugo Chávez was sworn in as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. And then, with his "Bolivarian Revolution" ideology, Chávez set out to build a mass movement to implement "popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption." President Chávez's Bolivarianism, a slanted and sinister interpretation of Simon Bolivar's rule and doctrine, was an extreme and forced socialist perspective that has imposed horrific sacrifices on the Venezuelan people and their once cherished homeland. It is not a democracy; there is virtually no economic independence and equitable distribution of revenue; and political corruption has been a rampant unwelcomed commodity. His "Bolivarian Revolution" is clearly a leftist political and social movement that is reminiscent of the failed and shameful 50 year Cuban revolution of Fidel Castro.

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Honduras will export nearly 5.4 million 60-kg bags of arabica coffee next season, well over double the volume in the 2004/5 cycle, cementing the country's position as the region's biggest coffee producer.

By Gustavo Palencia
In the small town of Marcala in the western mountains of Honduras, farmers are harvesting more coffee than ever before, part of a nationwide push to capitalize on higher prices that has doubled production in less than 10 years. But the boom comes with a cost. The coffee is coming in faster than growers can handle it and they are running out of space to dry all the beans, which need time in the sun or in drying machines to stop fermenting. Improper drying can ruin coffee for export. A drastic reduction in quality will slash the price the coffee can fetch. Local coffee company Cafe Organico Marcala (COMSA) was forced to rent out a nearby soccer field this year and cover it with plastic sheets to air out coffee cherries after their cement-drying patios overflowed.

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Each parcel of land will soon be home to a clinic or a schoolhouse. In addition to the clinic in Quimistan and the schoolhouse in Micheletti, they also surveyed the parcel of land in La Lima which will become the Flores de Oriente health clinic.

By Mary L. Williams
A four-person Missouri Army National Guard survey team from the 35th Engineer Brigade out of Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, has honed their Soldiers' skills during a recent three-week deployment to Naco (Cortés), Honduras, in support of Beyond the Horizon Honduras 2012. The team is easy to spot as they depart the forward operating base each morning headed out to a construction site. They're loading the bus with a sighting level, tripod and stadia rod -- standard surveying equipment. The parcels of land they will survey are baron or have been cleared of any existing structures. They know it's a tight schedule and that before the engineers begin work, the land is first surveyed.

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The incident is yet another reminder of the dangers faced by Honduran journalists, and comes just days after the disappearance and subsequent murder of reporter Erick Alejandro Martínez. Martínez, a member of the Honduran resistance movement, went missing on May 5 and was found dead three days later.

By Geoffrey Ramsey
A journalist has been kidnapped in Honduras, and an ex-police officer with suspicious ties to the incident has been allowed to walk free, seemingly illustrating both the degree of police corruption in Honduras well as the dangers of being a journalist in the country. According to La Tribuna, HRN radio news manager Alfredo Villatoro was taken hostage by unknown abductors on his way to work in Tegucigalpa on the morning of May 9. Authorities arrested ex-police sergeant Gerson Basilio Godoy in connection with the kidnapping, but El Heraldo reports that he was released after ten hours in custody. Basillo was dismissed from the police force in September 2011 for his alleged links to a kidnapping and extortion network.

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